Visions of a flying machine

May 11, 2006 — 10.00am

SURGEON. Politician. Humanitarian. And convicted murderer. Dr William Bland always seemed on a mission to defy his colourless surname. Yet Bland - one of the most influential men in colonial Sydney - also had another claim to fame that is about to be celebrated in a new online exhibition. Aviation pioneer.

In 1851 Bland sent a package to England containing a top-secret design that he was desperate to patent. Inside were the technical drawings of the first airship designed by an Australian. Bland called his latest invention an "Atmotic Ship", from the Greek word for vapour. Here, he believed, was a vessel that would revolutionise transport between London and Sydney, capable of flying halfway around the world in under a week.

The plans show a semirigid balloon with an inboard screw that he proposed would be steered by a series of sails, like a ship. Bland said "a few other parts of the Atmotic Ship remain to be enumerated". Most notably the form of propulsion, which he suggested would be "steam or perhaps some analogous gas power".

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By 1854, when models of the Atmotic Ship were exhibited at London's Crystal Palace, the impractical sails had been dropped, replaced by twin propellers. And the proposed airship had grown larger. Now it was 60 metres long, topped by a hydrogen balloon and supposedly capable of lifting 1.5 tonnes in passengers and cargo.

"Sadly, it was never built," says Alan Davies, curator of photography at the State Library of NSW. "Bland was an eccentric, ahead of his time."

Today Bland's Atmotic Ship seems a crackpot idea. Yet, says Davies, the 1850s were the golden decade of ballooning. "Even before Bland, people had seen steerable balloons as a way of overcoming the tyranny of distance. In the 1820s, there had been designs for an aerial transporting machine for convicts."

Davies says Bland's contribution to the history of flight has been sadly overlooked, known to few other than dedicated aviation enthusiasts. Now he hopes to restore Bland's reputation via a new online exhibition.

Aviation in Australia allows the public for the first time to explore the full range of the library's vast aviation collection - an online journey focusing on Australian innovations and early attempts at flight, from 19th-century ballooning successes and disasters to our heroic aviators such as the Smith brothers, Bert Hinkler and Charles Kingsford Smith.

The first attempt to fly a hot-air balloon in Australia took place in 1856 when a Frenchman, Pierre Maigre, attempted to take off in front of an excited crowd of 15,000 in the Domain.

When the balloon failed to rise properly, Maigre panicked, and a bystander was killed. A second attempt, in 1859, fared little better when a coal gas-fired balloon rose over the Sydney GPO and flew to a paddock near Haymarket, again causing casualties among the crowd.

But Bland's story is easily the most bizarre of all the aviation pioneers. "He was an unusual individual," says Davies. "In 1814 he had been transported to NSW for seven years for murder. He was a brilliant Royal Navy surgeon who had challenged the ship's purser to a duel."

In Sydney, the governor, Lachlan Macquarie, immediately recognised his talent and appointed him medical officer of the Castle Hill Asylum. After a year he had earned a full pardon.

"But he was always argumentative," says Davies. In 1818 he fell out with Macquarie, penning some anonymous lines about the governor's autocratic and egotistical leadership. He was promptly arrested and spent a year in jail.

For the rest of his life - until his death in 1868, aged 79 - he became one of Sydney's leading citizens. A member of the first Legislative Council. A pioneering surgeon. Health reformer. Advocate of public education. Founding president of the Australian Medical Association.

But he never lost his flair for invention. Though his Atmotic Ship may never have got off the ground, another working model that he displayed at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London proved more beneficial.

Ships returning from Australia to England with holds full of wool had suffered incidents of spontaneous combustion.

Bland's model showed how the problem could be solved if the ship's hold was flooded with carbon dioxide gas. The method was adopted by several coalmines in Britain.